Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tusk as European Council President is a mixed blessing for Cameron

Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, has been appointed the new European Council President. Tonight, Tusk has had warm words about how imperative it is that Britain’s concerns about the EU are addressed. As Open Europe reports, he called the possibility of an EU without Britain a “black scenario.”   Tusk’s appointment is a mixed blessing for David Cameron. On the one hand, Tusk comes from a non-Eurozone country meaning that he’ll be sympathetic to Britain’s desire for single market protections for the Eurozone outs. The Ukraine crisis has also reminded the Poles of how important Britain is in terms of stiffening the EU approach towards Russia; meaning that Tusk

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Can Douglas Carswell stop Ukip screwing things up?

I rejoiced at the news of Douglas Carswell’s defection to Ukip. Not because I’m a Ukip supporter (I haven’t made up my mind) but because it highlights the slippery dishonesty of the Tories’ modernisation programme – ‘the political equivalent of botox’, as Charles Moore puts it in today’s Telegraph: The pattern of the leader’s actions conveys a message to party workers: they are the problem. Not surprisingly, they tend to leave. Instead of being a renewal, modernisation has become a hollowing out. Douglas Carswell, by contrast, is authentically a moderniser. At the heart of Carswell’s vision for Britain lies the expansion of the franchise and political accountability. He believes that digital technology can create social cohesion and

Jim Murphy

I’ve been called a paedophile, a terrorist and a Quisling: Jim Murphy on the ‘Yes’ mob

I have had to suspend my ‘No Thanks’ independence referendum tour of Scotland. It was back in June that I announced my plan to tour the country.  A hundred events.  All outdoors in Scotland’s summer.  Me, my makeshift stage of two upturned Irn-bru crates, a microphone, one of those small speaker-amps, a one or two-strong road crew, take it to the streets. ‘From Barrhead to Barra’ was my catchline.   Barrhead is in my constituency and is synonymous with an industrial Scotland, a half hour’s drive from Glasgow.  Barra is another Scotland, twelve hundred largely Gaelic-speaking fishers and crofters at the southern end of the Western Isles archipelago.  The tour is old

Friday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Campaign against Bercow’s Clerk plan reaches 84 supporters

Monday will be a busy day in the Commons. Speaker Bercow is expected to give a statement on the swelling row over his plan to appoint Carol Mills as Clerk of the House (or another mysterious new role that he’s considering concocting in an attempt to calm the feud with backbenchers). That feud is getting more and more vocal, so Bercow had better have something decent to tell MPs when he does speak. The early day motion tabled by Jesse Norman and Natascha Engel will only appear on the order paper on Monday, but the campaign has 84 supporters now (not all will sign the motion as some avoid EDMs

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron may be about to call time on the coalition’s civil libertarian stance

It was not so much the announcements that David Cameron made in his press conference about the terror threat to the UK that were significant, but what he looks like he’s going to have to announce on Monday. The Prime Minister confirmed that the threat level to the UK has been raised from ‘substantial’ to ‘severe’. But he also said that on Monday he will be unveiling new measures to address ‘gaps’ in the UK’s ‘armoury’: ‘I said very clearly last week that there would be no knee-jerk reactions. We will respond calmly and with purpose. And we’ll do so driven by the evidence and the importance of maintaining the

Steerpike Steerpike

A very Scottish dinner for the Prime Minister

Mr S could not help think that last night’s Scottish CBI dinner looked a little dreary and frankly a bit ‘budget’. The PM was coming to town; could they not have strung up some bunting at the very least? There was good reason the whole thing looked rubbish though: bureaucracy. The guest list was cut from 700 to 230 and the budget for the event slashed to just £10,000 after the Electoral Commission declared that this was a pro-union campaign event. The penpushers decreed: ‘We are of the view that the CBI’s dinner does constitute campaigning and as a result we have sought detailed assurances from them and their suppliers

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ukip should beware distracting from its Carswell coup with talk of other defections

Stuart Wheeler has just been boasting on Sky News that two more Conservative MPs are ‘seriously considering’ defecting to Ukip. Wheeler has been the broker in any potential defections, wining and dining potential converts before asking if they want a meeting with Nigel Farage. Not all of them have said yes to that second offer. It is, though, plausible that there are MPs who are still not rock solid in their decision to back the Tories all the way to the next election. The result of the Clacton by-election, how David Cameron plays the Europe question and how he manages the party over the next few months will determine whether

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Even without more defections, the pressure is back on Cameron

What will be the impact on the Conservative party of Douglas Carswell’s defection? Even though there is some excitement this morning about other meetings that Ukip has held with Conservative MPs, it is worth pointing out that those meetings were firstly held a while ago, and secondly that a number of those MPs who did meet Stuart Wheeler decided not to meet Nigel Farage because that would have been a betrayal in itself of their party. Some did meet Farage, but decided not to make the leap. Carswell was one of those MPs who initially did not make that leap, so it is unwise to say that there will be

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Douglas Carswell: the rebel with an unclear cause

Anyone who would rather not live in a Britain run by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls should be dismayed at Carswell’s defection to Ukip. He is an original, intelligent and eloquent MP who has done much to help the Prime Minister form the more radical parts of his agenda. For a while, I thought that this was his game plan: to avoid frontbench positions, and engage constructive opposition – which is democratic tugging of the party leader from the vantage point of the backbenches. I defended him against critics who said he was an attention-seeker whose ego would one day explode. Today, it’s harder to defend him. He was elected to a

James Forsyth James Forsyth

If the Tories can’t keep Carswell in the fold, they are in serious trouble

Douglas Carswell’s defection to Ukip is a serious blow to the Tory party. Unlike so many other defectors, Carswell is not off because he has an axe to grind. This isn’t about his personal prospects but policy. What makes this defection all the more potent is that Carswell has been a major influence on contemporary Toryism. His Direct Democracy agenda is one of the more sizable parts of the whole Tory modernisation project and his Euroscepticism isn’t driven by some Pathé news view of Britain but by a view of how this country can succeed as a modern, free-trading nation. Indeed, the section in Carswell’s speech celebrating contemporary Britain is

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Eurosceptic camp ‘weakened’ by Carswell defection

Douglas Carswell’s defection today to Ukip is terrible for David Cameron. But it is also deeply inconvenient for his band of eurosceptic brothers. He was a key member of a powerful ‘cell’ of MPs who met regularly to discuss strategies for pushing the Conservative leadership further on European policy. One key colleague in this cell tells me that its members are as shocked as anyone else by the defection because ‘Douglas was refusing to get involved in our shenanigans. It was difficult to get him to sign off on anything we wanted to do, he was incredibly loyal, so something serious must have happened over the summer to change his

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Douglas Carswell has decided Cameron will squander his EU reform opportunity

As well as saying his decision is regrettable and counterproductive, the other Tory response to this morning’s shock defection by Douglas Carswell is to point people to instances where Carswell has said that only David Cameron as Prime Minister in 2017 will guarantee a referendum. In April, he wrote on his Telegraph blog: ‘In order to exit the EU, we need David Cameron to be Prime Minister in 2017 – the year when we will get the In/Out referendum, our chance to vote to leave the EU.’   Suggesting he is inconsistent is at least a little more nuanced than smearing him as a ‘headbanger’. But what Carswell’s defection today

Steerpike Steerpike

Douglas Carswell: Darling of the Tories, Labour and now Ukip

This is no ordinary defection. It would be easy for the Tories to brush off a member of the old guard as a swivel-eyed headbanger, but Douglas Carswell is not only a darling of the grassroots, he’s also extremely popular in the House. And not just amounst Tories. As Mr S reported last year from Carswell’s book launch, Tristram Hunt is a big fan: ‘In Douglas and his manifesto we have not as the whips office suggest a ranter, not a digger or a muggle-tonian but a true agitator with a modern Leveller tract, a 21st Century agreement of the people, and if the tools of the 1640s were the

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tory whips tell MPs: We will fight Carswell vigorously

The Tory whips have just sent their line-to-take on Douglas Carswell to MPs. Seen by Coffee House, the email repeats the Tory spokesman line that this is a ‘regrettable and frankly counter-productive decision’ as the only way to get a referendum is to vote Conservative. It adds: ‘The Conservative party will contest the by-election vigorously, to ensure that the people of Clacton have a strong Conservative voice in this Parliament and the next.’ But the question is whether many Tory MPs will be happy to put in the same kind of effort in Clacton as they did in Newark? Fighting a former colleague – and a respected one at that

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Douglas Carswell’s defection is a disaster for David Cameron and great news for Ed Miliband

I like Douglas Carswell. He thinks for himself and has always, I think, added some welcome colour to parliament. But I don’t understand his defection to UKIP at all. If nothing else it makes it more likely that Ed Miliband will be Prime Minister next May. Which in turn dramatically reduces the likelihood there will be an EU referendum in the next parliament. Which is the the matter with which Carswell is most concerned. He is leaving the Conservatives because he thinks – correctly – that David Cameron will eventually recommend that Britain remain a member of the European Union. Fine. But it is quixotic to leave a party that

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s next big European mistake

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_28_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman and Mats Persson discuss Cameron’s European way ” startat=830] Listen [/audioplayer]David Cameron loathes European Union summits, and with reason: they seldom go well for him. He has been ambushed by the French, betrayed by the Germans, seduced by the Swedes and even outsmarted by a Luxembourger — Jean-Claude Juncker, whom he tried to stop becoming President of the European Commission. He’ll meet them all again this Saturday, in Brussels, as they begin divvying up the plum jobs under Juncker’s presidency. As usual, the odds are stacked against Cameron. By now, every EU member has nominated a commissioner to work in Brussels for the next five years.

Daniel Jackson

The SNP’s ‘cybernats’ are a modern political scourge – with the zeal of converts

The first ‘yes’ campaign volunteer knocked on my door towards the end of last year. She was a member of the Scottish Socialist Party. I glanced at her dog-eared tally sheet — in my old block of 40 flats, only three residents had said they would vote no. In this neglected pocket of Edinburgh there are men who roll up their tracksuit bottoms to show off their prison tags. It is made up of decaying towers and pebble-dashed tenements. The people here are going to vote for change. Who can blame them? Now that I have moved to a more genteel suburb outside of the city, a further three yes

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: 74 MPs support campaign against Bercow’s clerk appointment

The cross-party group of MPs opposing John Bercow’s appointment of Carol Mills as Clerk of the House have now submitted their early day motion designed to stop the Speaker going ahead without scrutiny. The motion is co-sponsored by Tory Jesse Norman and Labour chair of the Backbench Business Committee Natascha Engel. Coffee House understands that 66 MPs from the three major parties have signed the EDM (all the more impressive given MPs are still on recess) and at least a further eight MPs will support the call for a debate on select committee pre-hearings before any appointment is made. The list of those 74 MPs who support this campaign is

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Breaking: Boris Johnson to stand in Uxbridge

Boris Johnson has confirmed that he is going to apply to be the Conservative candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. His announcement comes on the same day that Nigel Farage is expected to be confirmed as the Ukip candidate for South Thanet, which suggests that the Conservatives are keen to use Boris as their anti-Farage weapon. More to follow…